


Weevils

by Atropos_lee



Category: Hornblower (TV), Hornblower - C. S. Forester
Genre: Drabble Collection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-11
Updated: 2013-03-11
Packaged: 2017-12-04 23:44:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/716425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atropos_lee/pseuds/Atropos_lee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of Hornblower Drabbles, some reflective, some funny, some filthy</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weevils

**Boat**

"You are my boat", I whisper.

All though the long salt soaked swimming night you bear me up, ‘gainst wave on wave that would smash me deep into the whale filled abyss we skim. My hand on your tiller - oak hard beneath my fingers, thrumming, as we drive, my thighs straining against the thwarts. Until we are cast up in pieces on this sea-stained strand of bone white linen, skin slowing drying to a briney rimey crust.

A shell against my mouth. I whisper into its pink pearl chambers.

"You are my boat".

"Rollocks" he snorted, softly, and slept.

*****

**Cockpit**

I am perforce to inspect this hutch each Sunday.

This closet of matchwood and canvas, the home of eight, sleeping, eating, living, sweating together in a space in which not one grown man could stand upright, sea-chests piled together the only furnishing.

Five times since we sailed our profession has transformed it into a shambles of screaming men, blood and severed limbs. 

With each week the walls become more deeply perfumed by all the fluids damp, uncleanly, frustrated, seasick boys can make. It is one fuggy armpit.

Every Sunday I fill my lungs with longing, and linger, just one heartbeat 

 

*****

**Guards**

"I'll die before I see a son of mine in the Guards!"

In truth, at that very moment he beheld me *in* one particular Guardsman, Private Fletcher, as I recall.

I had become so enamoured of the cocks, cods and arseholes of the Blues and Royals, that I suggested to my father that he might stand me a commission to their ranks.

Once the good captain had cooled his ardour by beating me, he explained, with some patience, that Sodomy was to be considered a gentlemen's diversion, not the basis for a career, and that were I determined to become a notorious bugger, I should do it among men of substance.

Which is how I came to be posted in Justinian.

 

*****

**A Lower Deck Picture Gallery**

"So, you think that picture of the entire Battle of the Saints on McCoy's belly is impressive?

"Well, it moves when he moves! You can see Admiral Hood wave his hat at them Froggies!"

"Come here, boy - I'll show you a tattoo!"

"Where? Oh... OH! - Why do you have 'INCH' tattooed there?"

"Maybe it's to remind him how big he'd like it to be!!"

"Shut up, ya cunny-thumbed arse-lickers! Now, look a little closer. That's right! ... It might read I-N-C-H now - but give it a friendly rub or three, boy, and it reads INDEFATIGABLE AT ANCHOR!"

 

*****

**Ingrates**

Mr Hornblower! Mr Kennedy!! On your feet this instant!!

Oh, who would think such criminal ingratitude and beastly desires could lurk within the human heart?

Is this how you repay my faith in you! My years of support and protection aboard this vessel, whose very timbers you now abuse!?

What am I to think when I discover my two youngest lieutenants, spread eagled in the carpenter's walk, half-naked, crouching and indulging in an act of animal indecency that all right thinking men must find filthy, debasing, criminal to the core? 

And, and - and you didn't think to invite me!

 

*****

**Words**

"What would men call us if they saw us now?"

"Oh, I know the words. I've heard them all. I'm a Molly, a Madge, a Milksop, a Mincing Lay. A Catamite, Hermaphrodite, Pederast, Pretty-thing, Sodomite, Socratist, Shit-stabber - don't blush my dear - Eunuch, Butterfly, Bugger, Back Door Usher, Ganymede, Greek, I commit the Sins of the Plain. I am Trade. I am a Captain of the Windward Passage, a Player of Backgammon, a Foul Stain on the Fair Face of Humanity, Fire and Brimstone, Threat to Youth, an Indorser, a Disgrace, a Dapper Doll, and..." 

"And?"

"And I'm yours."

******

**Orders**

"Archie! Top me..... pleeeeeeze!" 

"No" 

"Pretty please!" 

"No" 

"I'll trade you my entire spirit ration for a week." 

"A month?" 

"Two weeks." 

"Three, and all the jam." 

"Alright - three weeks and all the jam! Now Top Me!" 

"As soon as I've finished this chapter." 

"Mr Kennedy. If you don't get out of that hammock, smash to me the deck, wrench my wrists behind my back, and fuck me 'til I scream RIGHT NOW I'm putting you on a charge!" 

"Well, Sir - if it means that much to you - you should've said! On your hands and knees now, Bitch!"

*****

**September Blockade**

The breeze brings remembrances of home from the coast 20 miles below the horizon. Windblown insects, the taste of earth, and the sharp morning scent of frosts a month away.

At my feet two bumble bees couple clumsily in flight. They seek to fuck the frost away, chasing immortality in generations to defy death a thousand years hence.

It has been a good summer. In truth a channel summer of driving rain and chills and squalls which tumbled us from our own sterile embraces often enough.

Somehow it is only sunshine and sweet cruising which comes to my recollection now. 

 

*****

**Ring**

A seaman never wears a ring. 

One slip on the backstay, the hemp's fiery caress on your palm, and the gold is gone, your finger too. No seaman wears a ring. 

So it was with a sudden liquid shock to the belly that I saw the winking circle as he turned, strung on a slim black cord, hanging against the curls on his breast, and recognised - his wedding band. A second shock, to belly and bowels and beyond when he unhooked it, laid it aside, and raised my thigh to slide himself into the only ring I can offer.


End file.
